Bad Bunny isn’t just dominating streaming platforms anymore—he’s now making waves in academia. Starting this September, Yale University will offer an elective course focused entirely on the work, cultural impact, and complexity of the Puerto Rican artist. Yes, just like Harvard introduced a course on Taylor Swift, Yale is giving Bad Bunny a seat in the classroom.
This course is part of a larger effort by Yale to connect critical thinking with the cultural forces shaping today’s world. And if there’s one artist defining this era with identity, presence, and conscious perreo, it’s Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny.
The course was created by Professor Albert Laguna, a specialist in cultural and migration studies. He’s not just a casual fan. He’s an academic who has spent years researching the intersections between the Caribbean and U.S. history. According to him, Bunny is the clearest, most current example of how culture, politics, and identity collide in powerful ways.
Bad Bunny performs onstage during Night One of Bad Bunny: ‘No Me Quiero Ir De Aqui’ Residencia. En El Choli at Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot on July 11, 2025 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images)
But What Exactly Will Yale Teach About Bad Bunny?
The course will explore topics like the Puerto Rican diaspora, colonialism, the tourism industry, and Puerto Rico’s place within the U.S. cultural landscape. Yes, the lyrics will be studied—but not to debate whether ‘Tití’ asked about one girlfriend or many.
The goal is to understand how urban music becomes a mirror for society. And how Benito weaves political critique into beats, New York references, and Spanglish verses. Songs like ‘Nuevayol’ (a direct nod to ‘Un verano en Nueva York’ by El Gran Combo) and ‘Turista’—a track that doesn’t hold back when addressing gentrification and the patronizing gaze of some U.S. tourists—are among the key selections for analysis.
Each track becomes a starting point for deeper conversations about history, identity, and cultural resistance. For Laguna, Bad Bunny isn’t just a commercial artist, but a contemporary chronicler: “You can’t talk about the history of New York without Puerto Rico—and vice versa.”
Bad Bunny will be the subject of the course “Bad Bunny: Musical Aesthetics and Politics” at Yale University. 🇺🇸📚
The class will explore the Puerto Rican artist’s cultural impact, the Puerto Rican diaspora and the politics embedded in his latest album pic.twitter.com/LxQCdpF9vX
With over 80 million monthly listeners on Spotify, multiple Grammy wins, and a Puerto Rico tour that sold more than 400,000 tickets in just four hours. Bad Bunny isn’t just dominating the music industry, he’s redefining the global sound of Latin music.
His career has become a case study in how an artist can use fame as a megaphone to speak about his homeland, his people, and their history. From calling out the island’s power outages to his unwavering choice to sing exclusively in Spanish, Bad Bunny has turned global success into a political platform.
Bad Bunny attends the 2025 Met Gala Celebrating «Superfine: Tailoring Black Style» at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 05, 2025 in New York City. Michael Loccisano/Getty Images
And now, that platform arrives at Yale—ready to be analyzed, challenged, and yes, maybe even danced to, alongside decolonial readings and essays on Caribbean geopolitics. As Laguna puts it: “This course isn’t about learning how to dance—it’s about understanding what power sounds like in the 21st century.”
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